One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Cult-Movie Review: The Blood of Heroes (1989)

“Life is hard
everywhere.”

-The
Blood of the Heroes (1989)

The
Blood of Heroes (1989) -- a film concerning a particularly vicious sport
called “Jugger”-- is one of my favorite, under-recognized genre movies of the late eighties.Ever since I first sawRollerball (1975), I have been fascinated with
the future of professional sports. We know that professional sports will likely
remain extremely commercial and profitable going forward, but we also know today that some are becoming more brutal, and that concussions and brain damage are often the unfortunate result for some football players.

Not
exactly a “good sport” is it, when competitors end up with catastrophic brain injuries...

Regardless,
The
Blood of Heroes is a violent and enthralling post-apocalyptic
film. In some senses, it’s actually the Rocky
(1976) of the dystopia genre, because it gets the audience squarely behind its
underdog heroes, and resolves in an incredibly hard-fought victory, with the
heroic athletes bloodied but unbroken.

Unusually,
the film is also a rite-of-passage story with a strong female character, Joan
Chen’s Kidda, holding center stage. Most
often, even in today’s cinema, the hero’s journey is a male one, but Kidda and
her dreams of a better life pulsate at the heart of the film’s action. Rutger Hauer portrays an experienced Jugger
player named Sallow, but in many ways, this veteran actor takes on the supporting
role of the “wise elder,” revealing to Kidda the ropes of the game, and,
importantly, the politics behind the game.

Reviews
for The
Blood of Heroes were mixed upon theatrical release. Vincent Canby at The New York Timeschampioned
the film and wrote that it is “entertainingly grim and, in an upside-down
way, romantic.”

Time-Out,
meanwhile, noted that The Blood of Heroes (a.k.a. The
Salute of the Jugger) offered“little to
look at and nothing worth hearing.”

In this instance, I agree with Canby’s conclusion.

Although characterization in the film is
ultimately subordinate to the frequent and violent jugger matches, one
nevertheless develops genuine affection for the players here: Hauer, Chen, Vincent
D’Onofrio and Delroy Lindo.

And although it is easy to gaze at the film and
conclude that the narrative is somewhat meandering or plot-less, this episodic quality, this loose structure, actually works in
the film’s favor. Watching The
Blood of Heroes, you are afforded a real taste of the Jugger’s life,
from the wearying nomadic existence, to the violence and intensity of the sport,
to the seemingly-endless ritual of tending to wounds and bruises after a match. The
film repeats this sequence of events over and over, until you
feel like you’re right there with the athletes, sweating and bleeding alongside
them.

Perhaps The Blood of Heroes’ underlying message
isn’t entirely deep, but it is, nevertheless worthwhile. The film suggests we
are all tougher than we think, and that even when the forces of the world seem
aligned against us, we’ll keep fighting and striving for something better than
the status quo.

“Play hard, you'll forget the fear.”

The
Blood of Heroes
is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which (most) folks no longer have the
time or luxury to think about professional sports, at least as we understand
them now. The world’s infrastructure has
collapsed following a series of wars, and folks no longer remember the “Golden Age of the 20th century”
or “the miraculous technology or cruel
wars that followed.”

Accordingly,
the popular game of Jugger removes the commercialism and professionalism of modern-day
sports, but amps up the brutality angle.
In this violent game, a team consisting of several players -- a “qwik,”
a “chain,” an “enforcer” and a “slicer” -- battles an opposing team. The match is bloody and violent, and doesn’t
end until the winning team manages to place a dog skull on a pike, or stake. Roving Jugger teams subsist by beating local
teams, and collecting tributes for their victories.

The
film follows a group of nomadic players, led by taciturn Sallow (Hauer). His team comes upon a farming community where
a passionate young woman, Kidda (Chen) wants to join the team as “qwik.” Kidda boasts dreams of playing in “the
League,” inside one of the nine cities.
Sallow himself was once in “the League” but was expelled from high
society for his inappropriate behavior with a lord’s concubine. Since that time, Sallow has eschewed contact
with the cities, but he nonetheless tells Kidda a challenge can be issued to
the city’s team. If the team accepts…they’re
in!

After
several victories, Sallow’s team travels to a city to mount such a challenge,
but the wronged Lord – named Vile –
still wants Sallow punished and humiliated.
He instructs the city’s team leader, Gonzo, to blind Sallow during the
match, and then, essentially to beat him to a pulp.

The
match in the city commences in bloody fashion, and for Kidda and Sallow, their
future is on the line…

“Juggers can't fuck after
the game. It doesn't work. Unless you like to rub wounds against wounds.”

In the introduction to this
review, I mentioned Rocky as a clear antecedent to The Blood of Heroes, but
perhaps, in terms of sports movies, I also should have made notation of Bull
Durham (1987) too. In that classic
baseball movie – one of the best ever made -- a player named Crash (Kevin
Costner) is cast out of the minor leagues and sent down to the Single A division
to mentor a promising player, one who could make it all the way to the
majors. As that player rises, Crash
hopes to rise again too…

In very, very broad strokes,
The
Blood of Heroes follows a similar sort of outline, with an aging
player, tossed from the big leagues, coming to mentor a young, promising player
in a smaller, less professional venue.
Sallow and Kidda represent those characters here, but in both situations
there’s this the idea of a cycle: of the
old, wiser player not only tutoring the young, but returning to the world that,
at some point, wronged him. In terms
of visuals, The Blood of Heroes, written and directed by David Peoples,
clearly owes a lot to The Road Warrior (1982) aesthetic,
and yet thematically it is much more a sports movie than a science fiction
epic.

Here – as in real life – athletic prowess is one of the few ways one can successfully
bridge the gap in an unequal economic system.
In the film, we see the immaculately-dressed, immaculately-cleaned upper
class citizens of the underground city, and can contrast their aristocratic look
with that of the Juggers, who are leathery, filthy, wind-blown, and marred by scars
and bruises. Just as is the case in our
society, the upper classes are willing to pay handsomely to be entertained by
good athletes, and thus a sense of class warfare seems present in all
interactions. One upper-class woman
likes to decorate her porcelain skin with the blood of Jugger players, and so
there’s also an impression of a vampire-like
over-class lording it over the under-class. .

Uniquely, at its valedictory
moment, The Blood of Heroes visually mirrors to its spiritual cinematic
antecedent, the aforementioned Rollerball. There, in the final battle, James Caan’s
player Jonathan E, defeated the last enemy player right in front of his
nemesis, an executive played by John Houseman.
Specifically, he checked the opposing player into the glass barrier
separating him from Houseman.

Here, director Peoples’
stages a nearly identical shot, with Sallow taking out Gonzo, just inches from
Vile, in front of Vile’s box seats (behind a kind of protective cage).

In both cases is the same
idea is transmitted: the notion of individualism trumping established order, or
authority.

In both cases, defiance
beats obedience.

If anything at all undercuts
the success of The Blood of Heroes, it is the final triumphal note, however,
the film sounds after Sallow and Kidda win the day. Immediately, the vulture-like upper class descends
upon them, congratulating the players, flirting with them, chatting them
up. The implication is that Sallow,
Kidda and the others are now in like flint, and welcomed into a life of comfort
and luxury.

But really, aren’t these
Jugger players letting the establishment absorb them, at this point, and becoming
part of the corrupt 1% percent in the process?
Aren’t they, by joining the league, playing the aristocracy’s game? I like some of the early shots set in the
city, where Sallow and Kidda are literally on the outside looking in (through
bars on the windows) at the upper class, but the ending seems to undercut this crucial
sense of outsider-ism.

It seems that the real point
of the movie is (or should be…) that reaching the top doesn’t necessarily put
you where you want to be.

Once you get there, you
realize you’re still trapped playing another man’s sport.

Aside from that complaint, The
Blood of Heroes is a rousing sports movie in a dystopian setting. Shot in Australia, the film makes the most of
its picturesque exteriors, and we see every variation of jugger match known to
man. The game is played in the scorching
sun, and in the rain and mud. There’s
also some interesting symbolism in the film in the form of the game itself: a literalization of the notion of picking
over the bones of a dead world. That’s
what Jugger is, literally, a battle to win a skull, a bone…something dead and
useless.

The Blood of Heroes is a visceral and involving film, in my judgment, and one
made doubly so by the twin decisions to keep dialogue to a minimum and to not
over-burden the narrative with more incident or detail than necessary. As I wrote above, the film is extremely
episodic and repetitive: travel, play, sew up wounds. Rinse
and repeat. If you allow yourself to
go with the flow, you can fall into synch with the movie’s distinctive,
almost-trance-like rhythm and literally almost feel what it’s like to dwell in
this world of sweat, dirt and blood.

And given the alternative of
those porcelain-skinned, aristocratic vampires, you may even come to agree with
Sallow’s opinion that scarred skin – like
this violent but memorable film -- is strangely beautiful in its own way.

3 comments:

One of those films I wish more folks knew about. I like it myself, not as much as Rollerball, but it's a very worthy future sport film. Much appreciation to the realistic touches such as the elevator ride to the underground city taking a long time, the scarred, torn up bodies of the juggers. How about poor Dog Boy? I am somewhat torn on the changed ending for the American market. I actually think both work pretty well. Afascinating, bleak world, where one measures greatness by being in a sport where you have a 99% chance of being left a cripple.

This is a movie that can really only be appreciated by an athlete. Nothing to say?

You fail to mention that Gonzo refuses to do as Lord Vile wishes, because deliberately injuring a player is not part of the game. The injuries happen in the course of the game, but are not the reason for the game. Note that in the dogtowns, the juggers party with each other after the game, and there is no animosity there.

This is one thing that frequently gets missed in the interpretation of this movie -- the juggers are a brotherhood.

As far as under-recognized goes, there are jugger leagues (using much less violent rules, of course) . Do a search for 'german jugger league'.

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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